These may be the best quality brushes you can get at a more affordable price than the comparable options. To have a more definitive answer we are going to need a lot more people using these brushes and getting the word out. Army Painter’s Wargamer Series are the most directly comparable range to GeeDubya’s ( Games Workshop’s) offering and in many peoples opinion, of superior quality. However, this is purely subjective. Unlike most of the alternate brands on this list where brush sizes follow the naming conventions used for all fine art brushes 000, 00, 0 1, 2, etc. Army Painter (like Games Workshop) have their own unique names for the brushes they offer. In some products, they do advise the equivalent Fine Art brush size. Their ‘Masterclass brush’ being something equivalent to an average 00 for example. Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable brushes are best suited for use with watercolour paint, but can also be used for other water-based paints such as thinned gouache. Perfect for both washes of colour and fine detail work. Even one of the artists working in the big box art shop (where I got it) said they don't use WN series 7. They couldn't suggest anything... but could answer what brushes they used when I asked ;)

date 05/01/19: A few people have pointed out that I’ve been a bit harsh against these brushes. I’ll admit that this comes from my own personal burn – having bought these myself instead of the regular series. I struggled with these (particularly with glazing). I found a marked improvement in my painting with the normal set. However, these are still a great set of brushes and sharing my personal experience is not fair to you the reader or the brand. Over time with your painting, you will learn to understand if you want a longer and wider (normal set) or shorter and thinner (miniature set) bristles on your brushes. Then you can select either range based on your preference. Ugh I bought my first ever series 7 number 2 and was so excited... until it got home and hated using it. Early 2020 so this seems not to be a new issue.

Featured artist: August Sandstorm

When the brush is in water, I could see the hair spread out untidily and there were a few strands of wavy hair. Fully endorsed by several signature (god-tier) miniature artists, I personally use these brushes exclusively now and have done since 2019. This looks like a problem with the brush. I posted a few photos of the brushes online and some said the WN quality control has gone down. One suggested putting the hair in boiling water to make it straighter and apparently there's a Youtube video just on this. I tried that too with the hair in boiling water and it did not work. The replacement brush was better but definitely not as good compared to the other three brushes. Getting the WN Series 7 brush to taper to a point is challenging. The other three brushes could taper easily to a sharp point.

If you happen to be using WN Series 7 brushes, please share with me your experiences in the comments section below. Availability

It may look like the brush is unable to release water evenly but if you make a conscious effort with your technique, you can release water evenly. I’ve kind of turned to Artis Opus’s base set to answer this question. In their set, you get #000, #00, #0 & #1 and that seems like a fair starter range. However, I use their #3 brush primarily. Like with the Raphael 8404, the point is so fine you can use these brushes for pretty much any job. And finally 2 series D brushes. The XL for basecoats and vehicles. and the Medium for shading and edge-highlighting infantry models.